Nine Antico

Nine Antico is a comics illustrator and author who was born in 1981. Her first book, Le Goût du paradis (The Tasteof Paradise), which appeared in 2008 (and was reissued this year by Requins Marteaux) could be read as a modern version of Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter), transposed to the Paris suburb of 93. How to find your place when you are a nice daddy’s girl, and moreover white, torn between your good upbringing and a voluptuous fascination with the petty gangster lords of the city?Nine Antico charms us with inventive writing and a keen sense of the comic sketch, which is powerful and often hilarious. The uniqueness of her drawing, all curves and arabesques, which are more evocative than categorical, lies in the perfect synthesis between the retro feel of the belle époque, urban graffiti art, the psychedelia of the seventiesand the dreamlike sensuality of a Guido Crepax. In 2010, she combined the fantasy biographies of Betty Page and Linda Lovelace in Coney Island Baby (l’Association), and chronicles the bittersweet adventures of three budding young girls in Girls Don’t Cry (Glénat). Both titles were selected in the 2011 Angoulême festival competition. This Autumn, a grant from the Stendhal Mission is allowing her to explore Los Angeles, in the footsteps of Pamela des Barres, the main inspiration of her book, researching the groupies and the musical environment of the 70s.

First memoriesThe scents of bargain colognes, which gave the boys at school the air of men in the making.It was a hint of vulnerability: if they scented themselves it was to please, it meant they needed us, in their masculine fortress.

First sensationsThe taste of tobacco in the mouth of a boy kissed in Italy. I immediately loved the taste, by proxy.

Last wishesAn archive of the smells of skin. By opening a bottle, one could, like the hero of Süskind, breathe in the life of its owner, right to its innermost depths. One would be enriched by many lives, without buying biographies.I would have time to read Shakespeare and Maupassant...